The Black Gestapo

1,747 words

When I found out that there was a 1975 Nazi-themed blaxploitation — or perhaps a black-themed Nazisploitation — movie called The Black Gestapo about a militant black organization that patterns itself after the SS, I knew I was going to watch it. You can’t make a movie called The Black Gestapo and expect me not to watch it. I’m glad I did, because it is a funny little time capsule piece that ties together various strains of 1970s pop culture fascinations. For one, it mixes elements of multiple genres of exploitation films. It also satirizes 1970s black militant movements such as the Black Panthers. There’s also tons of funk music, with the obligatory 1970s waka-waka guitar. There are even shades of the 1970s Godfather craze. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube, here.

Black Gestapo (1975) Trailer

One thing exploitation filmmakers like to do is to put what is in the headlines on the silver screen, and no doubt The Black Gestapo was almost certainly intended to capitalize on intense public interest in the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, whose rise to power in the 1970s shook the West’s faith in post-colonial Africa’s future when the newly-independent African nation chose a psychotic baby-brain to be their leader. Not only did Amin murder hundreds of thousands, but he was also extremely racist and known to expel entire ethnic groups from his country. Idi Amin’s brutality and no-“not everyone is like that” racism earned him the moniker “the black Hitler.”

Amin frequently praised Hitler throughout his career. In response to the massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian nationalists at the 1972 Olympics, Idi Amin wrote the infamous “Hitler telegram” to the Secretary General of the United Nations and the Prime Minister of Israel, stating:

Germany is the right place where when Hitler was the Prime Minister and supreme commander, he burned over six million Jews. This is because Hitler and all German people knew that Israelis are not people who are working in the interest of the people of the world and that is why they burnt over six million Jews alive with gas on the soil of Germany. The world should remember that the Palestinians, with the assistance of Germany made the operation possible in the Olympic village . . . We must consider this problem very seriously jointly with the people who want to assist the Palestinians to remove all Israelis from the Middle East and take them to Britain, which was responsible for taking them to Palestine.

Idd Amin on hitler

Just as the 1933 film Gabriel of the White House imagined what would happen if a Mussolini type of figure came to power in America, The Black Gestapo imagines a black Hitler rising to power in the streets of Los Angeles.

The Black Gestapo was the brainchild of the director/writer duo of Lee Frost and Wes Bishop, who six years prior had collaborated on Love Camp 7, which is arguably — depending on how you define it — the first Nazisploitation movie. At any rate, it established the template of sex and sadism in a Nazi concentration camp which would later be copied by Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS and the parade of Ilsa rip-offs that followed. Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS, released two months before The Black Gestapo in January 1975, was produced by the Jew David F. Friedman, who played a Nazi guard in Love Camp 7.

The Black Gestapo stars two blaxploitation veterans: Rod Perry, who had previously starred in 1974’s The Black Godfather, and Charles P. Robinson, who had previously appeared in Sugar Hill, a zombie-themed horror blaxploitation meant to cash-in on the success of Blacula. Robinson would later find fame in the 1980s as the black guy in Night Court.

As the movie begins, we meet General Ahmed (played by Rod Perry). He and his followers are decked out in stereotypic militant commie garb with the berets and everything. But there’s a twist in that they are all wearing red, white, and black Nazi-looking armbands, except that instead of a swastika, there is a black fist. Ahmed is preaching to a crowd of his intention of creating a People’s Army to uplift the black community:

Martin Luther King had a dream and it was blasted into eternity with him. I offer you reality. You’ve got to stand tall and demand your rights. Nobody’s going to give you a damn thing. The People’s Army was established through a grant given by the white community. Blacks helping blacks with white money. Now you have turned your back on your own police force. Dope pushers are feeding junk to your kids and you sit back doing nothing. Gambling operations are forced on black store owners and you say nothing. If we are to be considered as equals, if we are to ever receive are true place in this community, we must ban together now.

The dope pushers and racketeers Ahmed was talking about are “The Syndicate,” a gang of villainous white mobsters who hold the black community of Watts in their greasy Italian fists. At least, I think the evil white gang are supposed to be Italian. Even though the filmmakers made no effort to find Italian-looking actors to play the gangsters, they still gave them names like Vito and Vincent.

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One day, General Ahmed’s girlfriend is walking home from work when she is rudely sexually propositioned by two white mafia enforcers. Eventually, one of the men goes too far in insulting the black woman’s maidenly virtue and she slaps him. The two white mobsters start roughing her up when three members of Ahmed’s People’s Army run to the rescue. The two white mobsters proceed to beat the crap out of the three black guys, beating one so badly that he is hospitalized. So far, the movie is off to a good start.

After this humiliating incident, Ahmed is visited by his right-hand man, Colonel Kojah, who says that he wants to 20 men to form a defense force that will strike back at the Syndicate. Ahmed does not believe in vigilantism and thinks that it is the police’s job to deal with the syndicate. Nevertheless, he reaches a compromise with Kojah that he will give him six men on the condition that they only be used for defense and never to attack. Kojah excepts the deal, even though he has no intention of remaining purely defensive.

I’m not sure if this movie is meant to be simple, escapist fun or if it is actually trying to say something. Director Lee Frost, who also plays they leader of the white gang, is quite clearly having fun when he is on screen. “You mean to tell me that a bunch of niggers are driving me out of town?” he exclaims at one point The website Black Film Archive describes the movie as a “spoof,” so apparently blacks interpret it as a comedy. And yet the film already touches on the classic Martin Luther King reformism as embodied by General Ahmed and the more militant, Malcolm X revolutionary vision represented by Colonel Kojah.

Beyond that, much of The Black Gestapo can be interpreted as a metaphor for Nazi Germany — depending on your point of view. The black community of Watts is held in the grip of an alien race, and so Kojah has to Nazify the blacks to deal with them. At first, the People’s Army simply roughs up the gangsters as they are on their way to make collections, but the violence then escalates between the two camps until they are in a shooting war. At first one sympathizes with the Kojah in his quest to free the people of his community from the racketeers, but the twist comes when the gangsters are finally vanquished, and rather than liberating the blacks from their grip, the People’s Army simply takes over the rackets and continues oppressing the blacks themselves. If anything, they are even more brutal than the white mobsters they replaced. This is a very Jewish narrative about Nazi Germany: The Nazis rose to power by appealing to ethnic solidarity, but it was really just a smokescreen for a naked power grab. Once in power, they were more tyrannical than the people they overthrew.

With all the new income they get from taking over the Syndicate’s rackets, Kojah can expand his operations and upgrade his defense squad into an army. He buys a big house and a property for training his new recruits. Suddenly, the colors of their uniforms change from khaki and red to the black and white of the SS. After a training montage, Kajoh holds a rally to address his followers:

My warriors, you have done well. Trained hard. I’m proud of you. And soon, I promise you, we will be strong enough, and when that time comes, we will expand. We will move from the ghettos where we have been sentenced. The white community will feel our power. They will pay dearly to hold us back. We will descend upon them with strength, and they will feel our vengeance!

Kojah goes a bit Hollywood at this point. For the rest of the movie, whenever Kojah is seen at home, he always has a white woman on his arm. For all his talk about black uplift, Kojah sleeps with the enemy rather than settling down with a nice black sistah. Kojah thinks General Ahmed is an Uncle Tom for taking white money and wanting to work within the system, but it is now clear that Kojah is the real race traitor This is another frequent Jewish trope: Nazis have to be portrayed as insincere, hypocritical, and not really believing what they say. In Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS, Ilsa sleeps with and then castrates Untermensch prisoners in the camp in flagrant contradiction to her claimed Nazi values.

The Black Gestapo Allan Alper, Payback

General Ahmed eventually gets wise to the fact that Kojah’s defense force has far overreached its original mandate, which was merely to protect the citizens from violent gangsters, and has now become violent gangsters themselves. The People’s Army gets their state funding cut after Kojah instigates race wars in neighboring communities. The climax of the movie is when Ahmed infiltrates Kojah’s compound and singlehandedly defeats his army. Ahmed proves that even though he is a peaceful reformist, he is still a bigger badass than the violent revolutionaries.

The Black Gestapo is a kitchy good time with lots of fun racism as blacks and whites hurl “nigger” and “honkey” at each other for 90 minutes.